Saturday, August 6, 2016

preserving herbs in salt, some beautiful cloudy days and more river dips!

last week, we had several cloudy and windy days but blue, blue skies and lots of sun in between.

the clouds here are just gorgeous!

all different kinds of clouds that hide the sun and then the sun pops back out.

beautiful!

our bro and sis G and C were down - they are getting ready to move here full time in september - woohoo! they gave us this shelving unit.

it's perfect for out on the porch to put gloves and shoes in.

ahhhh....river days. we love river days and beach days are coming soon. here is our beautiful river.

here is the stone boardwalk that jambaloney made for me to walk out into the river.

we had a super-filling, nutritious kidney bean salad with kalamata olives, green olives, pepperoncini, hearts of palm, artichokes, fresh-crushed garlic, ACV, EVOO and chopped up pickled onions. it was deelish. and filling.

we also had some cherries to snack on. when we are down at the river i like to make things that we can have one or two bites of and then put it back in the cooler, go for a dip, suntan a little, have another few bites, rinse and repeat.

kids - hang on to your seats. here's our first major haul of shelling peas to be frozen for the winter:

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! it's not much, but we eat the peas right off the vine when they first come out and then every 2 days from now until the end of september we go out and pick whatever is ready, have some in a meal and then add the rest to the bag in the freezer. that way we get freshpicked peas all winter long. i don't blanch them, just rinse them and in the bag they go.

here's some more rose petals for teas and salve. and some borage flowers, evening of primrose, st. john's wart and chamomile also for teas and salve. if you pick only a few every single day and let the sun do the drying - you will have teas all winter.

for my healing salves, i like to pick fresh flowers and herbs.

here's a wonderful supper of roasted potatoes, carrots, turnip, garlic cloves and onions with hearts of palm and cherries on the side.

roasted veg are deeeeelishous! i cut up the chunks of veg and dump them in a big bowl with a lid. i add a ton of olive oil, turmeric, cumin and cayenne - yummeh!

and did you know that you can preserve whole herbs in sea salt and they will last at least 6 months in a dark area or up to a year in the fridge?

right now i have dill flowers coming in gangbusters. i have planted more dill, and left some of the dill flowers to go to seed for next year's seed....but what to do with these delicious flower heads when my cucumbers, peppers and zucchini are not yet ready for pickling?

you collect your dill heads (i love dill heads in pickles) and you clean them and dry them off. get a jar and line the bottom with coarse sea salt.

add your dill heads.

cover them with salt.

put them in a dark area until you are ready to use them. if more dill heads appear before you are ready to use them, add another layer of dill heads and cover them with salt. keep doing this until you fill a jar. and then 5 months from now when you get a gorgeous fresh-caught striped bass - swish the salt out of the way and your perfectly preserved dill heads will be as fresh as the day you caught them. you can do this with any herb. imagine making fresh basil in december from basil you grew and salt-bedded at the end of august. the basil leaves will come out as fresh as new.

just be sure to use SEA SALT and be sure to use enough of it! and guess what? that herbed salt is still useable for years to come!

serve it with fresh-picked peas, grated purple haze carrots and make a dressing of EVOO, ACV, garlic, lemon, honey, sea salt, pepper, turmeric, cumin, cayenne, a gorgeous dollop of local honey and a pack ton of mint! and since the borage is now flowering add some beautiful and edible borage flowers. the man (jambaloney) has just finished buidling himself a proper workbench out of junk wood and is pretty proud of himself. he deserved a great supper after all of that work!

tomorrow it might be rainy according to one weather channel, or it might be sunny according to another, or it might be a mix of both, or it might snow - the only reliable method of predicting cape breton weather is using a weather stone. they last a life-time and they always tell you the weather. we sell framboise manor weather stones of different sizes between $20 and $50 dollars but you have to pay the shipping (it costs a lot to mail rocks!). their basic proven meteorology method is thus - put the weather stone out in your yard where you can see it from a window. if you can see the rock and the sky is blue - it's a sunny day. if you can see the rock, but the rock is wet, it's raining. if you can see the rock but it has some white stuff on it - it's possible that it is snowing or hailing. if you can't see the rock because it's covered in white stuff - you're in a blizzard.

our email addresses are listed on the right side of our blog. if you would like one of these proven cape breton weather stones - just email us. we'll work out the shipping cost for you.

but regardless of what the weather is like tomorrow - i made some delicious lemon balm, mint and honey sun tea.

that's roughly about 2-3 cups of chopped herbs - 3/4 lemon balm and 1/4 mint. pick your leaves and rinse them and then just tear them up and bruise them by hand. a big honking dollop of honey, fill it with delicious berkey-filtered rainwater, leave it in the sun all day giving it a stir every now and again and then put it in the fridge for overnight. tomorrow, we'll be drinking this beautiful infusion all day.

teehee. and i can't help myself. i have to tell you! i made ice-cubes with borage flowers to go into each cup - that's pretty awesome no?

Sol - it would cost a fortune to send you a cape breton weather stone - but for you - i would take the cost on myself. and yes, if you put the rock near some grasses, it works as a wind stone. when you look out the window at the stone -if the grasses are blowing around the rock - it's windy. these cape breton weather stones are amazing at weather reading. bahahahah!

and you know what? it's been strangely windy here for about a week now. what's up with that? xoxox

Dani - you are very welome. did you see in one of my previous posts that the bird's eye chili pepper plant that we planted from your seed last year and overwintered in the house is putting out a ton of peppers??? it's awesome!

we needed something out on the porch for shoes and stuff and the cupboard just fit magically. we have plenty of room for all of our preps and preserves in our strange half-attic thing. and the salted herbs thing is something i learned from my mother years ago - it's tried and true! xoxoxo

oh Kelly - you'll be amazed if you do it with basil. put the washed and dried whole leaves on a nice layer of salt and you can overlap the leaves, then another layer of salt, another layer of leaves....continue...even start a new jar if you have a ton of basil coming in and yes - you'll be making sun dried tomato basil hummus in the middle of winter! it is such a treat! xoxox

TB - you are so correct - salt is good for a bunh of stuff. that's why soldiers used to be paid in salt and that's why we have the expression "he's worth his weight in salt".

wanna know something crazy??? i have researched how to harvest salt from the ocean and it's dead easy. one day i am going to try to harvest some for fun but in a grid-down - we will have salt! woohoo! xoxoxox

Tricky - the herbed salt and herb-packed salt really work. adding the herbed salt to meats and fish is just delicious! and then preserving herbs in salt for use throughout the winter is just fabulous! you can make sun tea out of any herb and each is delicious - sage, thyme, rosemary, oregano, etc - the thing is to find something that goes well with it. honey usually goes with all of it but sometimes a bit of lemon or mixing lemon balm with another herb works as well. i am looking forward to you getting settled in your new place. xoxoxox

Tricky - the herbed salt and herb-packed salt really work. adding the herbed salt to meats and fish is just delicious! and then preserving herbs in salt for use throughout the winter is just fabulous! you can make sun tea out of any herb and each is delicious - sage, thyme, rosemary, oregano, etc - the thing is to find something that goes well with it. honey usually goes with all of it but sometimes a bit of lemon or mixing lemon balm with another herb works as well. i am looking forward to you getting settled in your new place. xoxoxox

i'm back Harry and Tricky has been added to the blogroll....anyway - you know we'd love to have you nearer to us to share information and knowledge and you know the kids always have a safe place to go. the mermaid will be seen next time we go down to the beach. beach weather (for swimming) doesn't happen until august and we just have had a bunch of other stuff going on for a beach day - we've been doing lots of river days and cheating by taking the atv instead of walking down.

but spain is not our cup of tea only because this island has such a low population, we live in the middle of nowhere...some people live in the country...we live in "the wilds". but otherwise we would love spain. i hope everything is going well with you my friend and i know that you are looking forward to M and the kids coming home. sending much love, as always. xoxoxo

Hey Kymber, you know if Trump gets elected down here (sorry Harry, ha) we'll be wanting to move up that way so get ready. Might be a large influx LOL. We'll bring two old cats and some great cooking abilities :-)

About Framboise Manor

Framboise Manor is our Bug-Out Location (BOL) that we have been living in since December 2010. As can be seen by the above picture - calling it simply a "Manor" doesn't do it justice - we bet you think it is more like an "Estate", eh?

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Who Are We?

we are jambaloney and kymber. here's a pic of us below...we look very happy and content. it's because we really are!

About jambaloney

(he's only 23 in this pic...he has 20+years of additional muscle now...if you can believe it!)

kymber here and talking about jambaloney.

i've always called him my angel. my rock. my best half. the best part of what i have always wanted to become.

he has a soul as big as the biggest mountain, he is strong, he is in incredible physical condition, he is 51 and yet most people think he is under 40. he is humble and modest, charming, gorgeous and will help anyone with anything at anytime. he never grumbles and only every now and again complains or is a tiny bit cranky (nothing that a hug can't fix!). he can cut both sides out of 70 tires in minutes, build raised beds from scrap wood that he drags out of the forest, weedwhack 800ft of our road down to the river, and haul more wheelbarrows of dirt, mulch, rocks and seaweed than is probably medically-advised. he's learned how to braid, make bread and no one makes better rice - not even the chinese. he supports my every, crazy endevour. he went 44 years without a driver's license and got his license after being trained by my crazily-wonderful french canadian friend in 2 weeks. she never stopped talking the whole time. in french.

he has biked everywhere his entire life, at one job he biked 24km EACH WAY. that's to and from! 24km to work AND 24km from work! oh and just accidentally has an honours degree in philosophy.

i believe that he is Our Lord's most beautiful and perfect creation. but i might be biased. he can very accurately shoot a ben pearson cougar re-curve from both the left and right. and his aim is dead on.

he is bow-legged and only 5'7", but has the most incredible eyes. and a tiny mole on his upper lip. he writes the most romantic "insta-poems". he tells me he loves me several times a day. he calls me "babe" and "honey". and he means it.he loves hot sauce and spicey things like cayenne and banana peppers, he buys (or now picks) me flowers, he left a lucrative, high-paying IT job and his family to follow me here to this remote little island. he builds me shelves and washes all of our laundry with me by hand.

oh and he was baptized Anglican. and was an alter boy. sheesh. somehow, through my intervention, i am turning him into a pagan-christian-fundamentalist-confuscian. look, even i can't figure that out!

the name jambaloney is a nickname that i gave him over 10 years ago. he still uses it. he can be reached at "jambaloney@gmail.com". he loves comments or emails. and he loves me.

if i were given the opportunity to wish one thing for the world - i would wish that every woman on the planet had a jambaloney. i know that i could save the world this way. i have friends who have asked me to clone him. i am trying. believe me, i am trying. one day i will perfect the science involved, and when that happens, i promise all of you a jambaloney.

i love him more than...breathing, lobster, boiled dinner, fresh bread out of the oven, bugging out, singing back up for Madonna (ok...i made that one up!), fresh sheets on the bed, a glass of red wine after a long day, sunflower seeds, lavender, growing my own potatoes, T.S. Eliot, dancing, my babies (who are really just cranky old cats!) and the Bible.

i love him more than i love Framboise Manor. and i really love Framboise Manor.

About kymber

(this pic might seem odd. trust me, it's not. 20 yrs ago kymber went shopping with a girlfriend from the military and bought this dress. then she hooked up with that girlfriend recently. they caught up through email and one day kymberz friend mentioned that specific dress. kymber said she still had it (kymber still has her prom gown for crying out loud!). the friend did not believe it. so we had to take a pic of kymber wearing the 20yr old dress for her friend. kymber always likes to add accessories...and well, we had the bunny ears laying around. ya know, cuz everyone always has pink bunny ears laying around. ok, that's it...i am out of here! jambaloney)

what can i say about kymber?? A LOT!!most of it will have to wait for blog entries ‘cuz i just don’t have enough space here to do her justice…

so i’ll have to do my best… first and foremost, kymber is my partner and i will love her forever. she is the best partner anyone could ever have, i am one lucky guy!! she is 46, she is sweet as can be, smart as a whip, super cute, exceptionally feminine, strong as an ox, honest, kind, empathetic, wise, an amazing dancer, a master wit in speaking and writing….i could go on..i will!

at 5’ 1’’ she packs a wallop – a true force of nature -she is a master gardener and chef and spent 10 years in the Canadian Military – she has done 2 tours of Alert (the north bloody-cold pole). she is a UN-certified Korean linguist and spoils our 2 cats rotten. she also spent 12yrs working in the federal government, as a communications analyst at SolGen (now PSEPC) and Fintrac. she loves nature in the true sense of the phrase..the wildflowers, insects and birds here at framboise manor keep her entranced and captivated for hours.

anyone who is her friend knows that she will stop at nothing to help and heal, dedication and loyalty are an integral part of who she is and she is dead serious about anything she puts her mind to. yet she maintains the most delicate touch and a smile on her face always, never afraid to live and love no matter where and when.

she is the most genuine human being i have ever met! and she has encouraged me to embark on the most crazy and exciting adventure i could imagine… thank you babe - i sooo love you!!!